Breaking the Ice
by Checkerboards
Summary: Victor Fries: convicted felon, mutated scientist...loving husband? What will life be like now that Nora's out of the tube and healthy again?
1. Snow Mystery

Author's Note: Mr. Freeze, Nora Fries, Batman, Robin, and all the rest of them belong to DC and not me. This story takes place between the events of the movie 'Sub-Zero' and the episode 'Cold Comfort'. Enjoy!

* * *

_We're all familiar with the tragedy of being you_

_It's hard to show you any sympathy when all you do _

_Is beg for pain_

_Baby, someone is crazy, and it's you -_ Jonathan Coulton, 'Someone Is Crazy'

* * *

_In a case that could herald a new era in cryogenic medicine, Nora Fries has been revived from her frozen state and has undergone a vital organ transplant. Nora Fries is the wife of the late Victor Fries, who was killed two weeks ago when an offshore drilling platform exploded and collapsed into the ocean. The transplant operation, funded by the Waynetech Corporation under the auspices of its CEO Mr. Bruce Wayne, was today declared a resounding success by Dr. Lyle Johnston, chief surgeon at Gotham General Hospital. Mrs. Fries is reported to be resting in stable condition. Ironically, the cryogenic technology invented by Nora's husband, which tragically transformed him into the criminal Mr. Freeze, was credited by Dr. Johnston as having saved her life. It's a shame Victor Fries will never know. - Excerpt from 'Gotham Live' broadcast_

* * *

There's a saying among the vigilantes of Gotham City: _Never assume anything_.

This, of course, isn't true in all situations. Some things are constant in Gotham. One can safely assume that the Riddler will turn in clues to his next crime like a schoolboy tattling on himself. One can safely assume that a stray batarang that ends up embedded in a tree will spark Poison Ivy's rage. And everyone knows that the Joker will do his best to kill as many people as possible every time he escapes from Arkham Asylum. (Assuming, of course, that he bothers to escape before the killing spree begins.) Rogues can be predictable like that.

But it is important to note that rogues were predictable in another way: in lethal situations, they stayed alive. They were harder to kill than cockroaches. So while the media blithely reported the death of Victor Fries, Batman and his subordinates kept his file open and active.

* * *

In some respects, crimefighting was generally easier in the wintertime. Criminals hated the cold weather just as much as anyone else, so they tended to lurk inside in easy-to-bug hideouts and even-easier-to-infiltrate restaurants and bars.

Lurking inside definitely had its good points, Robin thought miserably as he crouched on a snowy warehouse rooftop. Pants had their good points too. Real pants, not red spandex leggings. Thick pants, maybe with a layer of mylar on the inside, good pants that would keep out the -20 degree wind that was currently whistling around Robin's ankles. He yanked the cape even tighter around himself and tried to tuck it in around his feet like a blanket.

"Anything?" Batman dropped silently down next to him.

Robin looked enviously for a moment at Batman. That big, warm, solid, warm, sturdy and above all else _warm_ Batsuit danced through his thoughts. "Nothing." Which was true enough for the moment. The penny-ante criminals inside had been talking their heads off, true, but they hadn't said anything in the two most important categories of information that there were: Stuff We Didn't Know and Stuff We Already Knew But Didn't Know You Knew About. Instead, they'd focused on their own important topics, like "That Goddamn Blizzard" and "Why Batman Sucks".

Batman stuck out his hand. "Let me see the headphones." Robin savored one last moment of warmth on his ears before he yanked the oversized headphones off and passed them over. "We've got better headphones than _this_," Batman remarked before settling them on his head.

"Better. Not bigger."

Batman eyed his newest protegé and inwardly smiled as he watched him cupping his ears for warmth. "There are warmer costumes, too."

"_Now_ he tells me," Robin groused, standing up and stretching. "Mind if I go home and change?"

The wind whipped across the rooftop, picking up a spray of snow and dotting the two crimefighters in white. Batman ignored it. "Be quick."

"It's not like I'll miss much!" Robin said cheerfully as he dusted the snow off of his cape.

"Or so you assume. They're planning something, and I'll find out what," Batman promised darkly. "Probably while you're in the Batcave. The nice, warm Batcave..." he trailed off as Robin vaulted the gap between the roofs and handsprung away into the darkness. A door slamming reverberated in the headphones, and Batman closed his eyes to better focus on the crackly voices coming into his ears.

"Hey, Sic! How ya been?" _Sic. A short form of Icicle, one of Fries' henchmen._ Batman nodded as 'Sic' spoke, matching voices with Batman's memory of him.

"Don't call me that." Batman's ears echoed with a thump as Icicle sat down in a cheap wooden chair, and a creak as he leaned back in it.

"So what's the news with Freeze?"

"Don't ask me. How should I know? Pass the coffee."

Static crackled as Batman raised an eyebrow beneath the mask. Icicle wasn't with Freeze anymore?

The other thugs in the room were equally baffled. "Whaddaya mean? You're his head guy!"

"Not anymore!" A slurp of coffee. "Crazy bastard told us all to get out and not come back."

"But ain't he still got that busted leg? Don't he need even _one_ of you errand-boys anymore?" one of the other men in the room asked snidely.

The henchman formerly known as Icicle must have chosen to ignore the taunt. A smart move, since the taunter was Jimmy 'Red-Hot' Wells, known for having a killing temper. "Nah, his leg's fine now. Healed great." Icicle slurped more coffee. "What I don't get is how he's gonna make a comeback when he don't have any help!"

"Maybe he don't _want_ your kind of help anymore. Maybe he's lookin' for a little..." There was a pause where Red-Hot had obviously drawn an hourglass shape in the air. "..._companionship_."

"You really don't get it, do you?" Icicle snapped. "What would Freeze want with a henchwench? It's not like he could _do_ anything with one!"

_True_, Batman mused.

It was at that point that Red-Hot introduced Icicle to his fist, whereupon Icicle repaid his gesture with a mug full of hot coffee to the face. Batman allowed the group to beat each other up for a few more minutes before he swooped down and secured the lot of them.

Still, he had to wonder - What _was_ Freeze doing back in Gotham without his henchmen?


	2. Happy Days Are Here Again

_I will wait a lifetime if it takes that long  
I know she's out there for I have heard her song  
In dreams she sings to me  
Her angel's voice a symphony_

_Is she in a garden or a meadow fair?  
Does the dappled sunlight shine ribbons in her hair?  
Does she sit patiently  
Smiling as she waits for me? - Jonathan Coulton - 'Millionaire Girlfriend'  
_

* * *

What was Victor Fries doing back in Gotham?

Sunbathing.

Of course, when you're Victor Fries, sunbathing is an activity that you generally miss out on. Going to the beach is obviously a thing of the past. (Of course, dealing with swimsuit salesmen is also a thing of the past, thus proving that there's a silver lining in every cloud.) But now, in the middle of one of Gotham's worst spells of cold weather to date, it was the perfect time to wriggle out of the mechanized cold-suit and get some fresh air. -30 was cold, but to Victor it was sweatshirt weather.

And so he strode around the rooftop, humming to himself in his deep voice as he sculpted a seat for himself in a deep snowdrift that had gathered in the shelter of the storage shed.

Victor Fries was habitually depressed, overly melodramatic, and fond of asserting just how terrible his life was to anyone with ears (and on occasion, certain inanimate objects. If Batman had bugged Victor's music box, he could have learned anything he wanted to know about the Saga of Nora or the Epic of Being Incarcerated at Arkham). However, angst and drama can only fill up so much of your day. Most of the rogues had hobbies to take their minds off of things, whether it was rereading Alice in Wonderland for the ten millionth time or simply admiring a favorite collection of shiny things.

Victor's hobby was music. When one was locked up in Arkham, how comforting it was to mutter the lyrics of Evanescence's "Lithium" (though any of their songs were angsty enough to fill the roaringly sad silences in one's head). When Batman was pounding your face (or in this case, your glass helmet) in, could anyone help but ironically think "Hit Me Baby One More Time"? (The pained look on his face when Batman attacked him was often due to that infernal song, not the risk of death that accompanied the tiniest crack in his headgear.)

And when thoughts of your frozen wife tormented you beyond pain, beyond sanity, sometimes music was the only escape. No-one else knew that Victor had had an iPod in his suit long before they were commercially released. If they had, rec time at Arkham would become a festival of pestering rogues pressing their ears against his helmet and demanding "Turn it up louder! I can't hear!"

There were also times that his musical tastes were not used to identify with his feelings, but to sneer at the world around him. One of his favorite sneering songs had always been 'I Feel Fantastic' by Jonathon Coulton - mostly due to the numerous medications listed inside that made the singer's life bright and shiny wonderful.

Taking medications to feel better when life truly was terrible was like using makeup to paint over a gangrenous wound, in Victor's mind. Was he truly supposed to expect a little oval of chemicals to make him _happier_? Hadn't chemicals done _enough_ to him already?

Besides, what if they _worked_?

But that was the question he'd never wanted to ask. He clung to the memory of Nora Fries like he clung to the idea of breathing: Without them, life was impossible. So Nora and music filled his days and nights, sometimes simultaneously, always reminding him of what he'd lost.

Thus, the atmosphere in Victor's head tended to remain the same: Partly angsty, with a chance of fury later this evening. However, something now had him in a totally new frame of mind.

Victor Fries was happy.

He had discarded all of his previous associations with the song 'I Feel Fantastic' and was singing the chorus as if it was the gospel truth. "I feel fantastic, And I never felt as good as how I do right now", he was singing to himself as he finished the chair on the roof of his apartment building, "Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day when I felt the way that I do right now, right now."

He flopped happily down onto the crunchy surface of the chair. Could life _get_ any better? Here he was, enjoying the brisk December air, after setting up his new home for himself _and his wife_, who he'd be bringing home from the hospital any day now! Okay, so he hadn't actually gone and told her that yet, but it was obvious, wasn't it? Besides, he'd had that broken leg, and casts made out of ice were a bad idea for the interior of hospitals, no matter how high they'd had the air conditioning cranked up. And phone calls were simply out of the question. The last thing he needed was for Batman to trace his call and show up to break his _other_ leg. It was aching enough without his help nowadays, just like the rest of him.

He closed his eyes and let the brisk evening wind whip across his face, ignoring the constant dull throbs of pain as they pulsed through him. It was so _nice_ to be outside without the suit! Gotham was hardly ever cold enough to allow him to venture outside unprotected from the elements. Oh, sure, being cold had benefits - the chair beneath him, for example, which no one else could sit in without ending up with a wet patch on the back of their trousers - and it was easy enough to find hideouts with meat lockers when running from Batman. Hell, most restaurants in the area had walk-in freezers! And as long as you took care to drag the manager in with you, there was no worry about calling the cops. But it also meant that getting a breath of fresh air was a tricky task at best, so he lived for those icy midwinter days when he could leave the suit behind and get some honestly fresh air.

His reverie was interrupted by the click of the rooftop door opening. His eyes flicked open, searching the rooftops for Batman or an incoming fist, when he spotted two young children huddled in the doorway clad in what must have been every coat they owned, followed by a youngish woman who was equally bundled up. "I'm sorry to disturb you...ah..." she trailed off as she noticed that the man occupying the rooftop was only wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. His bare feet were propped up on an ottoman of snow. "Aren't you _cold_?" she blurted out.

"Of course," he smiled. "But no matter. What did you want?"

"Oh." She hesitated for a moment, trying to figure him out, then gave up. He seemed nice enough, and if he wanted to court frostbite that was his business. "Would you mind if my kids played up here for a bit?"

"Not at all," Victor said cheerfully, leaning back in his seat comfortably. The woman shooed her kids out of the door, and they plowed into the nearest snowdrift with yelps of pleasure.

"Be careful!" she called at them. She shuffled her feet uncomfortably in the snow. Victor watched her with amusement - just how long would it take her to put the pieces together?

"Tell me, do you read the news?" he said amiably, starting the conversation that the woman obviously wanted to have.

"Oh, no," she said, "it's so depressing, isn't it?"

Victor glanced at the newspaper next to him, which was folded open to an article about Nora's recovery. "Not always," he grinned. "I find it quite pleasant."

"You're one of the few, then." She bounced on her toes, arms wrapped around herself for warmth. "James! Let Toby have a turn too!" she called out, noticing the two boys squabbling over a toy atop a drift. The bright yellow igloo-brick mold bounced out of their hands and down the snowy hill. The younger one, presumably Toby, dove after it and was promptly tackled by James. They rolled down the drift together, wrestling for the toy as if they were fighting for the football at the Super Bowl.

There was a sickening cracking sound as they landed. Toby squealed in pain as James scrambled off of him. "Toby!" the woman shrieked as the snow underneath the boy's arm began to darken with hot red blood.

"Call an ambulance," Victor ordered, running to the boy and dropping hard on his throbbing knees. A shard of yellow plastic, razor sharp, jutted out from between the bones in the boy's forearm. Victor shed his sweatshirt and the T-shirt beneath it and began tearing them up into strips for a tourniquet. "Go!" he shouted at the woman, who was frozen in place by the stairs.

"M-m-my cell phone," she stammered, hands searching every pocket of the three coats she wore. "I can't...no, here it is!" She triumphantly yanked it out of her pocket and dialed. Victor turned his attention back to the little boy, who was sobbing with pain. Victor unsheathed a knife from the back of his belt - without the suit and his freeze gun, he needed _some_ kind of weaponry - and slit the coats away from the tiny arm.

"Arent'cha gonna take it out of his arm?" James gasped, watching Victor tying the shirt strips around his brother's arm.

"No. Let the doctors do that when they get here." He sniffed superiorly. It seemed like Batman could be across the city in seconds, particularly when you least wanted him to be there, and yet this ambulance crew had dawdled through three full minutes without showing up.

If Victor had taken a moment to glance behind him, he would have had his theory confirmed. Batman _was_ there already, clinging to the building across the street and watching the scene carefully. When he'd first arrived, he'd expected Victor to chase the woman and her children off of the rooftop, possibly not with the intention of them using the stairs on their way down. But he'd behaved like a normal and somewhat well-mannered man instead of the brooding psychopath that he'd been as long as Batman had known him, so Batman had decided to hang around and wait to see if he'd reveal his true colors. He was taken aback when Victor took an active role in helping the small boy.

Mr. Freeze did not _do_ such things. Mr. Freeze would have frozen the lot of them and continued to relax surrounded by their ice-covered corpses. Had he reformed? It was a question that warranted further study. Batman hopped rooftops to get closer to the action.

When the ambulance crew finally _did_ arrive, Victor had moved them into the stairwell and was waiting impatiently just outside the open door. One paramedic bundled the boy into his arms and began racing down the stairs, tennis shoes thumping like the roll of a snare drum as he descended. The other paused, mouth open, watching Victor Fries standing in the snow, shirtless, shoeless, and not even goosepimply. Unlike the woman, the paramedic _did_ read the papers. "Isn't that...aren't you..." he gasped, pointing at him.

There was a loud flapping sound behind Victor as if a goose had just flared its wings. Over Victor's shoulder, Batman mimed silence with a finger over his lips. The paramedic nodded grimly and slammed the door in Victor's face.

"I see you've found me...Batman," Victor said, whirling to face him. But there was no one there. Victor knelt in the snow, tracing a Bat-footprint in the snow with one bare finger. He'd been here just now, and he hadn't arrested him! He must have been watching the whole time.

The tacit approval of Batman to his presence in the city made his grin grow exponentially across his face. Again singing the chorus to 'I Feel Fantastic', Victor clambered down the fire escape to the window of his apartment to prepare for Nora's homecoming.

_To be continued..._


	3. Maybe They Aren't

_I lie below, you float above_

_In the pretty white ships that I've been dreaming of_

_And I'd like to swim beside you_

_Getting dizzy in your wake_

_Getting close enough to touch you_

_Getting brave enough to take you into my arms_

_And bring you down to be with me - Jonathan Coulton, 'I Crush Everything'_

He'd done a lot to prepare for Nora's homecoming. Well, _homecoming_ wasn't technically the right word. It was a new place to both of them, and it certainly wouldn't be _home_ until Nora stepped inside with that smile on her face...

Until then, Victor had tried to make it as normal a place as possible. He'd rented a normal apartment, in a normal building, in a rather nice part of town. He'd gone to the storage unit where he kept all their old things and set up the place almost exactly like the old one had been. Their wedding picture, which he hadn't seen for so long, was hanging in the living room underneath their diplomas and pictures of them with their families. (Not that he'd seen _his_ family for years. For some reason, rogues tended to get left off of their families' invitation lists when it came to weddings and reunions and that sort of thing.)

The window stood wide open, letting in the cold air. Victor sprawled in a recliner with a copy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet open in his lap. It would take something special to get Nora's attention and hopefully distract her from seeing the notorious criminal Mr. Freeze instead of her loving husband.

Step one, he decided, was to ditch the suit. He'd had a special "casual" suit made, one that tried to blend a normal suit with the technology to keep him alive. It looked...well, okay, it looked completely stupid, but it was the closest he was ever going to get to 'normal' ever again. Nevertheless, he didn't want to go see Nora with it on. The last time she'd seen his face, there hadn't been a layer of glass between them, and he was determined that it would be the same now.

Step two: Shakespeare. Perhaps a little obvious, he thought, but the words of the Bard seemed tailor-made for his plan.

Step three: Managing to make it to Nora's room without the suit. _Tricky_.

And so it was that Victor found himself clinging like an ant to the outside of Gotham General Hospital, edging along the tiny ledge that would eventually lead him to Nora's room. He wasn't worried about being spotted. It was barely noon, far too early for the vigilantes to be out on the rooftops, and the commoners below never bothered to look any higher than their heads. He grinned as he clasped a window frame and waited for the wind to die down.

"And when at last I find you, your song will fill the air. Sing it loud so I can hear you,

make it easy to be near you," he sang lightly under his breath as he neared her window. Clutching the bundle of roses in his left hand, he grasped her window frame and peered in. She was there, she was awake! His heart soared. But she was being walked to her bed by a young male doctor. No matter. He'd settle her in and then he'd leave, and _then_ Victor could tap on the window.

He watched impatiently as the doctor seemed to take forever, fussing with the blankets and adjusting her pillows. Victor wanted to burst into the room and shoo him away - his wife's comfort was _his_ responsibility! But Nora was gently smiling at the doctor, being friendly and kind to him as she always had been to everyone he considered to be beneath her. "Oh the things you do endear you to me..." he began to sing, unconsciously, his mouth forming the words without his brain's permission.

And then the doctor leaned down and planted a big kiss on Nora. Victor's mouth went slack. When that doctor left the hospital, he'd find him. He'd find him and he'd kill him for taking advantage of his _wife_ like that, when she was sick and obviously...obviously...The roses fluttered off the ledge as he saw her wrap her arms around him and pull him closer.

_Oh, God_. A sick certainty washed over him. He'd waited too long. He'd been too nervous to contact her and now she was kissing another man! He clung to the window, wanting to disbelieve what had just happened. But the two were giggling now, conspiratorially, and when they compared their shiny new engagement rings it felt like a punch in the stomach.

He would have preferred a punch in the stomach. He would have preferred just about any kind of injury. He could handle physical pain, but this...this went beyond imagining. And he had thought life was terrible _before_ Nora had woken up...The doctor was leaving, and Nora was settling down beneath her covers for a nap. Victor laid his hand on the glass, wishing with every molecule in his body that he could cry. After he'd left a frozen handprint on the glass, he began to creep back to the fire escape he'd climbed up on, with the words of a song running mockingly through his head. "Who knows how long I've loved you? You know I love you still. Will I wait a lonely lifetime? If you want me to, I will."


	4. The Best I Can Be Isn't Good Enough

_I was fine_

_I pulled myself together_

_Just in time_

_To throw myself away_

_Once my perfect world was gone I knew_

_You ruined everything_

_In the nicest way - Jonathan Coulton, 'You Ruined Everything'  
_

* * *

At this point, a less careful narrator would have allowed the following phrases to creep into the narrative: his heart was cold as ice; his chilling glare; cold shivers and icy pangs of fury... There would perhaps be a moment of insidious pun-related joy as the mentions of temperature, ice, coldness, and so on in relation to Victor's emotions insinuated themselves into the story. But references to Victor's condition in this case would be petty cruelty.

It is said that breaking up is hard to do in normal circumstances. And in some cases, this has proved to be an understatement - people denied their loved ones find themselves rapidly losing or gaining weight, going through boxes of tissues in one day, developing a new love for Ben and Jerry's...Perhaps they may even find themselves telling the whole pitiful story to a group of similarly afflicted people in a cozy little locked ward in the nearest hospital. Sooner or later, though, they would heal. It was only a matter of time.

But for Victor Fries, who had spent years of his life with his mind snuggled up with Nora, breaking up was hell on a whole new level. Nora had been his wife, his true love, and his justification for murder and theft on a grand scale. His entire life had revolved around her, even before she'd gotten sick. Everything he saw reminded him of Nora: a couple kissing, a snowflake drifting through the air, a dog squirming free of its leash to go scampering across the park with a concerned owner racing behind it. Nora was everywhere except with him.

And so, in shock, Victor Fries stumbled across Gotham City. He had nowhere to go and no-one to go to. He wandered for what must have been hours but what felt like minutes, watching Nora kiss her doctor over and over in his mind's eye.

He finally noticed that he was stopped, clutching a post as if it was Nora herself. It was the base of a pedestrian bridge arching over a river. For a wild moment he saw himself atop the bridge, then hurtling down into the embrace of the bitterly cold water. He'd do it!

But then a vestige of fury finally pounded its way into the forefront of his consciousness. He was _Mr. Freeze_, dammit! He didn't give in when things got tough! No, he grabbed his freeze gun and made things happen! Oh, and it would be so _easy_ to track down that doctor and freeze him right into the ground. All he'd have to do is go back to the hospital, wait for him to come out, kill him, and Nora would be...Nora would...

Nora would be heartbroken. He sagged against the post again. He didn't _want_ to be Mr. Freeze anymore. Wasn't that the whole reason he'd gotten that apartment? So that he and Nora could live a relatively normal life, like they had before she'd gotten sick. If he showed up as Mr. Freeze and killed the man she obviously loved, wouldn't that just make her hate him more?

Did she hate him? Did she even care a little for him? He growled in frustration, banging his fists on the metal pole, not noticing as his skin split in two and half-frozen blood oozed out. How could he know? What could he do?

_How did you get her in the first place? Court her, you idiot!_ a voice sounded from the back of his mind. But how do you court someone when you can't even be near them?

Ah! There was the answer! If he could find a way to fix himself, if he could be a normal person again, then he could try and win his Nora back. He could remind her of their happy days, when they walked by the river and cuddled in front of the television, and she'd see that that doctor wasn't half the man that Victor Fries was.

But how to become normal again? Victor uncurled himself from the pole and stalked determinedly homeward. It would only take a few minutes to pick up his old suit and his freeze gun, and then he could find a doctor (or two, or more) to cure him.

While they were at it, they could patch up his hands.

* * *

By the end of the week, five doctors had disappeared from Gotham. Normally, this would have caused more of a fuss, but Victor had chosen his targets carefully - single, reclusive research types that never bothered returning their phone calls - and no one noticed for days.

It hadn't taken much to get them to go along. For some, he didn't even have to threaten - the words 'medical emergency' had driven them into a do-gooder frenzy that surprised him. For others, a quick demonstration with the freeze gun had them dancing to his tune.

Their first consultation with him took place in a laboratory that had just recently had the heat turned off. The doctors were staggered throughout the room, chained to various workstations and swathed head to foot in warm wool coats. It was still forty degrees in there - far too hot for Victor to stroll around in without his suit. Instead, Victor sent his newly re-hired henchmen in to explain the situation and give the orders.

"But this is _preposterous_," one of them said, rattling the chain on his leg as he strode forward. "I have a delicate experiment going on that-"

"Save it," Icicle advised, thumping him in the chest. "The boss wants you to fix him, so you're gonna fix him. Otherwise..." he flashed the freeze gun on his belt, "we fix _you_."

The doctors got the hint and got to work. The next few weeks were a flurry of activity, with all sorts of tests and examinations scheduled at every hour of the day. Victor submitted tamely to their demands, bottling up his impatient fury by thinking of Nora's pretty face when he walked up to her, once again a normal man.

It was harder to hold back his anger when the doctors bickered over tiny things in his presence. When Dr. Swann dropped the test tube rack from her numbed hands and let it shatter all over the floor, it took an almost superhuman feat of strength to not freeze her solid on the spot.

But when they clustered around his bed and started chattering nervously about having to operate, and having to operate _now_, the only thing he had to hold back was pure undiluted fear.


	5. If It Doesn't Kill You

_Sad excuse for a sunrise_

_It's so cold out here_

_Ice and silence and dark skies_

_As we go round another year - Jonathan Coulton, 'I'm Your Moon'  
_

* * *

He was holding hands with Nora. He smiled, at peace with the world for the first time in what felt like centuries. She snuggled closer, draping his arm over her shoulder as if she was covering up with a blanket to keep warm...

But that wasn't right, was it? Shouldn't he have been screaming in pain at the touch of her burningly hot skin? He placed his other hand on her arm in a spirit of scientific inquiry. Nora's head snapped up to glare at him, eyes clouding over with sparks like fireworks. "Don't _touch_ me," she hissed, pulling away from him, and now the sparks were flying from her skin to sizzle and die on his own skin (which, he was horrified to note, was back to being icy cold and untouchable once again). With an ear-shattering _crack!_ Nora disappeared in a shower of sparks, sparks that burrowed into his skin, sparks that set him screaming as he slowly started to burn to death...

_Bleep_. _Bleep_. The gentle sound of machinery at work confused him for a moment. Heaven didn't have heart monitors, did it? Oh. Not that he'd be in Heaven, anyway. Well, _Hell_ didn't have heart monitors either, he was fairly certain. And in Hell, you were supposed to feel eternal pain and fire, right? So why couldn't he feel anything?

_That_ thought sent his sleep-fuddled brain into overdrive. He couldn't feel anything - not his feet, his legs, his arms...he couldn't even feel his shoulders. But he'd been fine yesterday, before the surgery...the doctors really must have screwed him up, he thought bitterly, to be on this many painkillers. Still, numbness was definitely better than pain. He finally decided to take a look at the world around him.

"How bad is it?" Victor intoned, letting his eyes adjust to the harsh fluorescent light. There wasn't an answer. "Well?" he demanded, turning his head to see the doctors huddled across the room.

"It's..." Jackson silently conferred with the others and reluctantly stepped forward. "It's bad, Victor. Very bad. Not fatal," he added quickly, seeing Victor's eyes widen in fear, "But it's...ah..."

"Spit it out," Victor demanded. "I can't feel my arms. Is that it? I'm paralyzed?"

"Uh..." the doctor stammered. "Y-you know you were...deteriorating. The chemicals, your condition...it was only a matter of time before-"

"Tell me!" Victor demanded.

"We had to amputate," one of the doctors in the back burst out. "Before it was too late."

"What do you mean, _amputate_?" Victor said slowly, grimly, fixing his piercing eyes on Jackson.

Jackson silently picked up a hand mirror and aimed it at Victor.

They hadn't merely amputated. They had _decapitated_ him. He was a head in a jar, hooked up to some crude machinery that looked like a prop from a bad horror movie. "No," he whispered. His reflection mouthed the word through hollowed cheeks and met his gaze with glaring red eyes.

"We did the best we could...we saved as much as possible," the doctors were babbling at him. "We couldn't reverse the process but we managed to stop it before it..."

"Get out," he snarled. They tripped over themselves in their hurry, trying to fit all five of them out the door at once. After they were gone, Victor closed his eyes.

His wife had left him. He hadn't been cured. And now he didn't even have a body to _be_ cured anymore!

If Nora had found him distasteful before, how would she react now? With the blinding clarity of hindsight, he was suddenly certain that if only he'd gone to her before, if only he'd hauled his iced-over broken leg into the hospital and visited her, she'd be at his bedside right now, patting the glass over his face and whispering that it would be okay.

Flowers! Oh, God, he could have sent _flowers_. There was no risk in that! Well, okay, there was _some_ risk, since Poison Ivy had been on the loose at the time, but he could have sent anything! A necklace or a...a snow globe...a _card_, how hard was it to get a _card_?

He'd blown it. It wasn't the fault of an illness or a faulty cryogenics tube (though heaven knew he'd encountered enough of both in his lifetime). No, the blame for Nora's departure could be laid squarely in his lap, except he didn't have one anymore.

He couldn't bear it. A scream ripped up through his throat, reverberating around the glass containing his head.


	6. DeEvolving

_I quit, I'm done_

_I don't think it's gonna work out OK_

_It's no fair and it's no fun_

_If every time it's gonna end the same way:_

_Me: zero_

_Big bad world: one - Jonathan Coulton, 'Big Bad World One'  
_

* * *

It didn't take the doctors and the robotics specialists too long to create a new life support system for him. When they'd presented it to him, he would have vomited if he'd still had a digestive system.

Spider legs. They'd put his head on a set of spider legs. They assured him that a human-shaped suit was in the works, but in the meantime he scuttled about his own hideout like the very same pests he'd killed off when he first moved in.

As his legs clicked mechanically on the tiles, the magnificent view of the city across the river caught his eye. He turned and placed two of his legs up on the glass, resting the bubble that covered his head between them.

_Somewhere there's a hell that was meant for me, and I think I found it._ He glared out the window at Gotham City, cheerful in its holiday decorations.

_But why should I live there alone_?

He raised his head and fixed a piercing glare at the twinkling lights of the city. People were happy in that city. People were _normal _in that city. It wasn't right. It wasn't _fair_. With his lip gently caught between his teeth, Mr. Freeze began planning his final assault on the world.

Step one: settle into his new robot body. Step two: Get a set of cheap hench-wenches to throw away as needed while out and about. As for step three, well...He glanced down the hallway to a locked door with the words 'DANGER: EXPLOSIVES' stenciled on it in large urgent letters. He was sure he could come up with something suitable for step three.

* * *

_Author's Note: And this, of course, leads into the episode 'Cold Comfort'. Thanks for reading!_


End file.
